Security company Impermium has joined Google to help boost the Internet giant's already considerable expertise in countering spam and abuse.

Security company Impermium has joined Google to help boost the Internet giant's already considerable expertise in countering spam and abuse.

Impermium's CEO and cofounder Mark Risher said in a post Wednesday on the startup's website that Impermium was joining Google. "By joining Google, our team will merge with some of the best abuse fighters in the world," he wrote.

"As sites gain in popularity, criminals and miscreants are never far behind, and Impermium has worked hard to defend some of the largest and fastest-growing sites," Risher added. Though he thanked customers and investors among others, Risher did not say what would happen to Impermium's current customers.

It is also not clear whether Google has acquired the company and its technology or mainly its staff, a trend known popularly as "'acqui-hiring." A number of technology companies have acquired startups mainly to add talented engineers to their staff. Google could not be immediately reached for comment.

On Twitter, Bradley Horowitz, Google's vice president of product for Google+, welcomed Risher and the Impermium team to Google. On his Google+ page, Horowitz wrote that Google's spam and abuse teams are industry-leading and world-class. "Impermium should fit right in," he added.

Impermium defended its customers against account hacking, account compromise, and other threats. The company claimed that its system used "patented statistical and machine learning models and proprietary threat intelligence from more than 1,500,000 worldwide sites to provide real-time protection for top enterprises around the globe."

Google announced earlier this week that it was paying US$3.2 billion in cash to acquire Nest, a maker of smart smoke alarms and thermostats, in what is seen as a bid to expand into the connected home market.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com